


Dirt Caked Under Dead Skin

by lovesrogue36



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Angry Sex, Episode: s02e06 Dead Man Walking, F/M, Missing Scene, Present Tense, Sexual Content, Stream of Consciousness, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2013-12-30
Packaged: 2018-01-06 17:07:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1109383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovesrogue36/pseuds/lovesrogue36
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missing scene from 2.06/2.07 | Rachel goes to the photography studio to tell Miles that Bass is alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dirt Caked Under Dead Skin

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Revolution nor am I associated with any of the cast or crew.
> 
> A/N: So, I was listening to The Civil Wars, particularly The One That Got Away, while I was writing this and I think it really influenced the tone and somewhat lyrical quality of this fic. If you want to listen to it while you read, you can find the track here: http://grooveshark.com/#!/s/The+One+That+Got+Away/5aXc1G  
> Also, this is present tense stream of consciousness with a ridiculous number of run-on sentences. The grammar nazi in me is on vacation. It's also not really that sexy because Rachel's distracted. Forewarning.

The sky’s turned pink-grey with dawn as Rachel crawls through the one unguarded hole in the fence around Willoughby, sneaking in instead of out this time. The barbed wire snags her arm and she scratches at the resulting cut as she walks the back streets into town. Streaks of dirt smear her pale skin and she imagines the rest of her doesn’t look much better.

The idea of a hot shower, fogging up the mirror and using a gallon of shampoo, practically makes her salivate but that’s nothing more than a fifteen-year-old fantasy. All that awaits her at home is a tin tub and some washcloths and she’ll have to make do, be sure she doesn’t look like she spent the night exhuming a mostly-dead body.

There’s something she has to do first though and, in spite of her dread, Rachel finds herself outside of Miles’ studio, the very first rays of sunlight glinting off the glass door downstairs. A quiet rustle of activity down the street catches her attention, the grocer probably or the last of those reporters, and she ducks inside the building. The door to his second-story room is unlocked, a stupid reckless habit she yelled at him for in Chicago, in Philadelphia. Rachel lets herself in, eyes adjusting slowly to the comparative darkness of papered windows and drawn shades.

Miles lies sprawled on the bed, one arm thrown over his face though she knows he isn’t asleep, and the fingertips of the other hand brushing a mostly empty bottle of whiskey on the nightstand. His clothes are rumpled and she feels a pang of guilt or pity, which is ironic really, either way.

She all but rolls her eyes, snatching the bottle away and lifting it to her lips. “You’re going to drink yourself to death.”

He doesn’t move, just sniffs into his sleeve. The alcohol burns her throat all the way down and she rests it back on the table, the unlit lamp there rattling in the quiet. Pressing her fingertips over her face, Rachel breathes out, a slow, steadying sound. “Look, Miles-”

Suddenly he’s swinging off the bed, hands at her shoulders and dark eyes turned to mud. “Did you think I’d just forgive you?” he demands, tears in his voice, shaking her so her insides feel all twisted up like he’s run her through a spin cycle. “He was a son of a bitch but- Did you think- And now he’s-” It was so like him, unable to finish his sentences, unable to coherently express even anger or loss.

Miles drops his head against her breast and she stumbles back into the glass door, fingers in his shirt. “How could you do this?”

“I’ve been asking myself that for three hours.”

“Yeah, I bet you’re just torn up about it.” His voice is muffled in her shirt, apparently unaware of the scent of soil and grass clinging to her.

Somehow she thinks they’re talking about two different things but she’s too tired to correct him. No, wait, that’s why she’s here to begin with.

“Miles, listen-”

“Shut up, Rachel, just _shut up!_ ”

He kisses her but it’s more like a continuation of his snarling, all fists and teeth and salty, ignored tears. She thinks maybe she should shove him off, tell him this can’t happen but who is she kidding?

Rachel leans back against the glass door, letting her eyes drift shut like this is romantic or something, his teeth in her lip. Slowly he releases her arms, hands sliding down over her body, and she winds her arms around his neck, instinct and habit driving her. He’s muttering into her skin, telling her how much he loved Bass, how much he hates her, how angry he is and how heartbroken and maybe this is all just her imagination but she knows it’s what he’s thinking anyway.

Miles wears his heart up his sleeve; she imagines it rubs against the place where he should be branded but isn’t. She knows his arm is crisscrossed with scars there anyway as if the world is trying to make it up to her and everyone else, that this man who should be marked by his mistakes has gotten off scot clean in spite of everything. He used to say she got flowery when she was sad but she’s not sad, is she? Why should she be sad?

She sighs, staring at the cliché photo of a blonde hanging next to the bed, a remnant of the apartment’s days as a photography studio. Or maybe the blonde’s staring at _her,_ watching life happening, her smile pasted on and faded for fifteen years. Sixteen years? Rachel’s not even certain what month it is. Wasn’t it Halloween recently?

Miles’ fingers are fumbling at her pants and she considers stopping him, thinks about it for a moment, but by then he’s dragging them down her thighs and it’s not worth it. She’s wanted this for a while anyway. Rachel drags her tongue over his bottom lip, hands clasping his cheeks, and he moans, bracing himself on the doorknob. It’s like he’s surprised she’s suddenly responding. Has she not been responding? Has she been lost in her thoughts again?

She almost wants to apologize but that would stop this, make him change his mind because he’s grown a conscience in the last five years. She’s still not sure if it suits him.

Kicking off her pants and boots, she leans into him, letting him hold her weight as she slides her hands up beneath his shirt and he’s hard against her stomach, denim between them, and she gasps, suddenly not as certain she’s ready for this as she thought.

Miles seems a little more present and capable than she feels and he somehow manages to get his pants down, or enough at least, and his fingers beneath the white cotton of her panties. She pushes away the thought of the dirt caked under his fingernails, of where those hands have been, and the accompanying grimace because it feels too damn good to care.

She thinks she moans a little, feels something rough and trembling escape her throat as he lifts her a few inches, the tips of her toes skimming the floor. She’s tall and he always liked standing because of that: he doesn’t have to hold her up the way he probably did with Nora and Emma and, well that’s a dangerous train of thought, now isn’t it?

Miles pulls her panties down or aside, or they disappear to somewhere anyway, and she digs her nails into his shoulders as he pushes inside her, a wince painted into the creases of his face. Actually that might just be a reflection of her own pained, seeping pleasure. It’s like they’re kids again for just a second and then he slams his fist against the door, glass rattling behind her head and god, that’s it, right there-

Still, they’re too goddamn old for this and he’s going to throw his back out and then what good will he be? So she mumbles something about the desk or the bed or whatever and he turns her, stumbling into the narrow table by the door, something falling to the floor with a crash and the edge digging into her ass. Rachel probably wouldn’t admit it aloud but it kind of turns her on.

As she wraps her legs around his waist, he seems to remember that he’s mad at her, recovering from the marvel of being inside her for the first time in- well, they don’t talk about the last time or the first time or any of the other times but it’s been many years and she almost forgot how good he feels.

His hands close around her arms and her hips, big and warm and calloused. She’ll have bruises in the morning (except it _is_ morning) but it’s not like they’re the first bruises he’s left on her. She tries not to think about that, focuses instead on the slick slide of him inside her, on the scrape of his jeans across her thighs.

It isn’t rough, exactly, but she’s arduously aware of his teeth cutting through the chapped, tender skin of her lip, of his belt buckle pressing against the back of her thigh. Actually it feels a bit like slow motion or soft focus, everything kind of hazy and sharp and that doesn’t make sense does it? But that’s what it feels like and he’s crying with his face is buried in her shoulder, clutching her to him so she won’t see it, like she can’t feel his tears soaking into her dirty blouse.

She won’t ask how he can cry over Bass. Really, she ought to pick up the pieces of his broken bones and tell him the truth: Bass isn’t dead.

But this is them, this is what they are without Ben, without Bass, without anyone between them. It’s painful and destructive and that’s not so different, really, only now he thinks he’s alone, the deep, lonely kind of alone. His hips jerk against hers and she squeezes her eyes shut, muscles fluttering. God, when had she gotten so close? Somehow she missed the good parts with too much thinking, as always.

Rachel pulls him up, sliding her tongue in his mouth, and his stubble burns her skin and that’s right and real. In this moment he needs her, even if it’s only so he can hate something, blame someone.

He comes inside her, panting into her mouth; she’d be mad but she hasn’t had a cycle in over a year anyway. Miles lays her back on the table, still inside her, always annoyingly tender after sex, and pulls her shirt and bra back with his thumb, tonguing her breast. She makes a sound deep in the back of her throat, one hand still clutching his shoulder and the other sprawled on the table beside her head, dirt and barbed wire-cuts streaked down her arm.

He’s kissing up her throat, sucking on her pulse point, when he asks, “Why are you so dirty?”

Rachel guesses she isn’t going to get off if she tells him the truth now, that he’ll be angry and distracted and overwhelmed. But that is why she came here in the first place.  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, idiot. The syringe, it was filled with saline and barbiturates.”

Her voice sounds ragged, like she’s been bounced over railroad ties, shredded on spikes. She closes her eyes, waiting for the fallout, lying half-naked on Miles’ desk with her legs around him and her shirt smashed down under her breast and intentional scars on her wrists, cesarean scars on her stomach and she’s aware of _everything_ down to the fly buzzing on the glass bricks and the faded blonde’s irritating stare.

She lets him gape at her for long heartbeats, blood rushing in her ears, before cracking an eye open.

“What does that mean?”

Rachel almost rolls her eyes at the question.

“He’s alive.”

It almost kills her to say it out loud.

He looks as if she’s given him the world.

 


End file.
